


Betrayal

by nekonexus



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-02-05
Updated: 2006-02-05
Packaged: 2017-10-26 03:29:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/278164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nekonexus/pseuds/nekonexus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kanan did not need a hero to rescue her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Betrayal

When they came for her, she did what any woman with an ounce of sense would do. She fought. She kicked and screamed and bit and hit, she forced them to turn the tidy comfort of her kitchen into a complete disaster.

It wasn't enough, of course.

Their well-hidden venom hissed in her ears, poisonous words she would have expected from the youkai, but not from her neighbours. The last thing she heard before they knocked her out was: "We know about you two. This is just two birds with one stone."

She wanted to curse them, but darkness claimed her.

~*~*~

When she awoke, it was with the dull throb of a headache robbing her of coherent thought. Putting a hand to her head, she found a lump but no blood. Her hair felt remarkably clean, falling loose around her shoulders, and she twined her fingers in it absently. She couldn't remember washing it. _(Couldn't remember....)_

"Awake, are you?" a rough voice asked, far too close.

She bit back the instinctive scream, but still gave a rather undignified squeak. The youkai sitting beside her chuckled. His face was all sharp planes that matched and accented the long lines of his ears. His eyes were black as coals, beady and bird-like. Clutching at the covers, she struggled to sit up.

The youkai licked his lips and laughed again. "Don't worry so. You have a certain _immunity_ here. No one's going to touch you."

"Why?" she whispered.

"You're bound for Hayakugan Maoh."

"No," she said immediately, automatically. "Please, no. Not that."

The youkai rolled his shoulders in a lazy shrug. "'Fraid I got no say in the matter. He likes his women pretty, though, so we'll take good care of you." He licked his lips again, eyes running lazily over the outline of her body.

With a muffled sound of frustration and disgust, she hid her face in her hands. She was not stupid; she knew there was no hope of escaping them, alone and unarmed as she was. Even with a weapon, she'd have no chance against them. And she dared not hope....

She honestly did not know if Gonou would try to rescue her. _(It would be suicide if he did. Would he not rather live?)_ She did not doubt that she was his world, that he would do anything for her, but she knew that he was deeply fractured. There were fissures and cracks in him that none but she had ever seen. There was no easy way to predict how he'd react. They'd had so little time together, really. She did not know the depths of him, could not say what lurked within that devilishly clever mind and behind those eyes that only smiled for her.

No, she must find a way to hope that he might live without her. There was no other reasonable option. And as for herself?

She would endure and bide her time.

The orphanage had taught her patience, if nothing else.

~*~*~

There are things she remembers that she knows Gonou does not. She remembers their parents; their faces, the warmth of their smiles, what it felt like to be safe and protected, and loved. She does not need to ask him to know he does not remember these things. If he did, he would not cling to her with such desperation, would not have made her his everything, his world. _(Without her, will he even choose to live? He is not a hero. He is a bookworm. A would-be school-teacher.)_ If he remembered them, if he could draw on that solid foundation of origin and family as she does, perhaps....

Perhaps it would have changed nothing. Perhaps it would have changed everything, for then she would not have had to be lover-sister-mother-wife to him. She knows it is not right. She knows he does not care, would even have gone so far as to marry her, if....

She'd talked him out of it. The villagers might not know the truth, but they suspected. _(They claimed to know, when they came....)_ How could they not, when she and he looked so much alike? And besides, they could not have children. They did not dare. The very thought was a wound to them both.

 _We are not fit to be parents, who have not had them ourselves,_ he'd said. But to see him with the villager's children was a delight and a joy. His gentleness with them surprised him more than her. They made him happy, when he had decided such a thing was not possible.

And she?

She has too much time to think, as the youkai carry her in a litter, winding their way towards the castle of Hayakugan Maoh.

~*~*~

"Do you have a name, girl?"

She swore she would not cower in fright, but here and now, she finds it impossible to raise her head. Yet she says, defiantly, "Cho Kanan." She will not whisper, will not tremble, even if she cannot meet the youkai's eye.

There is a scratching sound of pen on paper and the scuffle of feet as the youkai around her change places.

"Come."

The butt of a spear against her back ensures that she moves. Raising her head, she walks purposefully forward. Her hands clench at her sides, hidden by the folds of her skirt.

~*~*~

They strip her and bathe her, and leave her naked in a lavish bedroom. The bed is huge and canopied. She stays near one edge, covers pulled high around her, feeling like she might just disappear into the heap of pillows piled against the headboard.

A few minutes later, someone enters the room. She hears the thump of boots being removed and then the curtains are parted on the far side of the bed. A slender youkai peers at her through slitted eyes for a moment before seating himself on the bed, as far from her as he can be and still be comfortable leaning against the headboard. Reaching into his voluminous sleeve, he pulls out a slender, hidebound book.

He does not speak. He proceeds to read by the light of a single candle-lantern above his head until she falls asleep.

When she wakes in the morning, the candle has burnt out. Pale light filters through the gauzy curtains. He is gone.

A fussy, elderly female youkai draws back the curtains as she wakes. The youkai's claws are blunted, but her fingers are bony and unnecessarily stiff as she inspects Kanan's body.

"He did not touch you," she mutters, sounding unsurprised.

"Was that... the king?" Kanan asks, morbidly curious.

The old youkai snorts. "No. His son. His Majesty would not bother with a human."

"Then why?" she asks, as the youkai prods her into getting dressed in a simple robe. "What good would a... a half-breed... child be?" She tries not to shudder at the thought, tries to focus only on the sudden elation of not being slated for the King's meal when he tires of her.

"No business of yours," the old youkai mutters.

It doesn't make sense. If there is no need of an heir, then what possible purpose could she serve that a youkai woman could not serve better? It makes her curious, and curiosity is a great prop against the fear that still threatens to overwhelm her.

~*~*~

It is strange, she thinks, how quickly the mind will adapt to a new pattern. Her days are spent in a cold, windowless cell; her nights in the lavish bedroom. She is fed well, and though not exactly comfortable, still, it is not unbearable.

In this manner, a week passes. On the next night, when the youkai prince opens his book, she asks, "What are you reading?"

The look he turns on her is wide-eyed and startled for only a moment. His eyes slide almost closed again as he turns his attention back to his book. "Poetry," he says.

She wonders how he can read anything, with his eyes so barely open. "My... brother was fond of poetry," she says, before she can stop herself.

This earns her another flicker of a glance. "Was?"

She picks at the neatly-stitched thread of the coverlet. "Perhaps still is... if he still lives."

"Ahh."

Silence. She wonders what language the poetry is written in, if perhaps she could read it. But she says nothing more.

"You think him dead?" the prince asks, some immeasurable time later.

"I... I don't know," she answers, while her heart calls her liar and her mind seconds the sentiment.

"Anh."

It is later still when, as she drifts toward sleep, she hears him reading softly. But when she wakes in the morning, all she can remember is one line.

 _Raven caught the sun today...._

~*~*~

On another night, she is troubled by dreams, and wakes to find someone watching her.

"Do you look like him?" he asks.

She rubs sleep from her tired eyes and frowns. "Who?"

"Whom."

"Gonou," she begins, her tone a mix of mild annoyance and amusement. In her sleep-fogged mind, her brother-lover does not notice that he has corrected her grammar again.

"Ah."

Later, she realizes it was the youkai prince, and wonders why he asked.

~*~*~

The next time she sees the prince, she says, "People used to mistake us for twins."

Her statement earns her a cat-like smile; the first she has seen from him. The prince seems more relaxed tonight. He shed his outer robe before settling on the bed and the shorter under-robe leaves his forearms bare. They are more muscular than she expected.

"But you are not?"

"No," she says. "There is a year between us."

"Pity," he murmurs, and turns his attention to his book.

Letting the covers fall to her waist, she reaches for the comb on the nightstand. She knows he will not look; knows that even if he did, he would feel no need to touch her. The security of this knowledge is a balm to her where she did not realize she needed one. It is a comfort to claim her body as her own again, to not need to defend against wandering hands, however familiar.

"Her promises have come to nothing; she has disappeared," he says.

She strokes the comb through her hair and listens.

"Moonlight slants on the tower; fifth watch bells ring.  
I dreamt we were apart; it was hard to call,  
The ink is too thin, I cannot write the reasons.  
Candlelight falls on half the gold and emerald bedding,  
Only a tiny hint of musk scent remains on the embroidered lotus1...."

His voice is melodious, the words rolling in measured cadences from his tongue. She closes her eyes, but cannot hear Gonou's voice.

It has been only a little more than two weeks.

~*~*~

One night, he enters the room in a fit of temper that is evidenced only in the fact that he paces the room in a silent fury.

She moves to kneel at the end of the bed, blanket around her shoulders like a shawl. "What is the matter?" she asks, when his anger does not seem to abate.

He turns on her, his long tail of hair curling around him like a snake and, for the first time, she is truly afraid of him. There is a madness in his eyes, burning below the edge of his lowered eyelids. He stills, suddenly and completely, folding his arms into his sleeves and swallowing the tempest as if it never were. Tilting his head to one side, he favours her with a brittle, hollow smile.

"My father believes I prefer the company of men," he says.

She recoils a little, sitting back on her heels. "And I am here to... change your preferences?"

"Mmhmm. And doing a terrible job of it, I might say."

"How dare you!" she begins.

He moves so quickly she does not see it, only blinks and finds his claws digging into her jaw as he grasps her chin.

"Do you play mahjongg?" he asks.

"Of course," she answers, too surprised by the question to do anything but answer truthfully.

He makes a thoughtful noise, deep in his throat. "It would be more entertaining to kill you than to bed you," he says. "But then they would only send another one, and she would likely be more annoying. The weepy ones are truly tiresome," he confides.

She has no answer for that, can only watch the narrow slits of his eyes, and wait.

"Are you waiting for him?"

"Who?" Her neck aches; his hold on her is painfully tight and awkward.

"Whom," he corrects, and she remembers.

"No," she whispers, closing her eyes. "I do not believe he is coming."

Something strangely soft and velvety slides across her lips. She opens her eyes in time to see his long, pointed tongue curling back into the confines of his own mouth.

"And if you are wrong?"

She tries to shake her head and winces against the edges of his claws. "Would you let him live?" she asks, spurred by some deep desperation.

Her question seems to surprise him. His hold relaxes and he opens his eyes a little wider. "No," he replies after a moment. He sounds strangely regretful. "How could I?"

"Then it is better that he does not come," she whispers, letting her eyes fall closed again.

The youkai prince's hand loosens, slides slowly down her throat to rest on her shoulder. He hesitates, but then his other arm slides around her, as awkwardly as... as a teenager, she thinks, and her stifled laughter turns into a sob. She lets her head fall forward against his shoulder, finding a strange comfort in the unexpected embrace.

"You are a strange woman," he murmurs.

~*~*~

The next night, there is a mahjongg set laid out on a table before the window and the prince is waiting for her. He motions her to the table, waiting for her to choose a seat and a direction. She hesitates, glancing around the room curiously.

"Only us?"

He gives her a delighted smile as he sits down opposite her. "Yes. I have adapted the rules and scoring. Shall I explain?"

"Please."

She learns quickly, and this pleases him. The hours pass, filled with the clack of tiles and the soft murmurs of their voices as they call out the patterns and scoring.

"This arrangement," the prince says, some time later, "is certainly distasteful to the both of us."

She narrows her eyes at the tiles, tapping one fingernail against the edge of one. "Perhaps not so much as might be assumed," she says.

"Oh?"

Raising her head, she favours him with a bitter smile. "I am not a virgin."

"Ah."

She outscores him on that round, and the tightness of his smile says it was not intentional on his part.

"You have not spoken of a husband or lover," he says, shuffling the tiles.

"Not a husband, no," she demures.

It takes him but a moment to align the pieces. "I see." He speaks with a tone that says she has revealed more than she thought. Propping his chin on his fist, elbow resting on the table, he considers her through slitted eyes. He holds mahjongg counters between his lips like thin cigarettes. "Tell me of him."

"Gonou?" she says, startled. Shaking her head, she drops her gaze to the tiles. "There is not much to tell."

"Tch. That is... an unpalatable answer."

She frowns, the word beyond even the vocabulary she has learned from her brother. "We are orphans," she says instead, because it is where everything begins. "Our parents were...."

"Slain by the youkai?" he offers indifferently.

"No."

"Hmm...."

"We were sent to different orphanages," she continues. "Gonou... was too young to remember our parents. He... became cold and hard. He did not believe in love, or God, or... anything, really."

"Until he found you again," the prince says. "What a touching story."

She cannot tell if he is being sarcastic. They play on in silence.

"I am not much like him," she says, when the silence weighs too heavily. "He is very smart, and always in his books, looking for more knowledge. But he is also selfish... and sometimes careless. He observes the world, but it does not touch him much."

"Except for you."

"Except for me."

"Ahh."

The tiles are shuffled again.

"Once more?"

"If Your Highness wishes."

"Oh ho?" the prince says, around the counters that are back in his mouth. "Why so formal?"

She gazes at him frankly until his eyes open ever so slightly wider. "I do not know your name."

"Ahh." He stands, the motion quick and fluid, and bows to her formally. "Chin Iisou," he says.

She rises as well, bowing as properly as her loose robe will allow. "Cho Kanan."

"Cho," he echoes thoughtfully, returning to his seat.

And again she has the feeling that she has given him more information than would have seemed possible.

 

It takes him some time to come back to her statement. She knew he would, eventually.

"And how does being... not a virgin... make the situation any less distasteful, hmm?"

The tiles clack. She might win this round, if she is careful. "Because I do not fear the act, nor the... outcome." She did, before, when she arrived. Would rather have died than bear the touch of a youkai.

Time changes things. She has adapted by necessity.

His claws tick sharply against the tiles before his hands still for a heartbeat. "Ahh," he murmurs, and is silent for long moments more. "If I were to propose an arrangement, then...?"

"I might not be so shocked as you'd expect," she replies demurely, keeping her eyes on the tiles.

"I see."

She outscores him. The game stops.

"If you are found to be... with child --"

She watches from beneath lowered lashes, sees his features twist a little at the words.

"-- there will be no further reason to keep you here."

"Duty done?"

"Yes," he says, with the sibilance that only comes when he is annoyed. "I will see to it that you are released."

She raises her head, meets his gaze squarely. "Left to raise a child of taboo on my own, then?"

He tilts his head sideways, eyes narrowed to slits. "If you choose."

"I would not be expected to deliver the child here?"

She sees him struggle for composure, his hand clenching above the tiles. "No," he says shortly.

"I have one condition."

"Oh ho?" he laughs. "Tell me."

"Prove to me that Gonou is dead, and I will do this."

"Hmm," he murmurs. She can't see his eyes at all now but knows that he can still see her. "And what proof should I bring you? A head? Very gruesome. A hand? Would you even recognize it? Or perhaps," he says, and now his eyes slide open again, enough that she can see the amusement written there, "An eye?"

She shudders, has to press a hand to her mouth against the sudden rebellion of her stomach. "No," she whispers. "Just your word."

"Ahhh.... A wise choice. Securing any such proof would likely be difficult and time-consuming." And then, off-handedly, "I hear they have buried him already."

Closing her eyes, she curls in on herself, holding the pain of his words tightly. She cannot afford to cry, not now. This -- bargaining with her body -- is all the power she has. She does not hear his chair move, but she feels him suddenly beside her, staring down through slitted eyes.

"Is it worth living, alone?" he asks.

She raises her head, straightens her back. Takes a deep breath, and pushes back the hair that has tumbled around her face. "Yes," she says softly. "I can still build a life."

She will not say "without him," but the words are there, nonetheless.

Iisou makes a thoughtful noise. "With a half-breed child?"

"Or without," she says. _As long as Gonou does not know...._

"Come to bed," he says, and his hand on her shoulder is gentle.

~*~*~

Their coupling is accomplished in silence that night, and for two more. With her head down against the pillows, kneeling in the middle of the large bed, she endures, and he endures, and when, on the third night, he moans a name at his completion, she pretends not to hear. Pretends not to have guessed the game he is playing. Pretends it will be better in the morning.

And she knows, even before she misses her moontime, that his seed has taken root within in her.

She dreams of centipedes.

~*~*~

With the act accomplished, she is moved back to the dungeon. The prince returns to his distant, vague politeness. He inquires if she can read, provides a book simple enough for her.

He does not visit often.

She loses count of the days and nights. She can feel the child growing inside her; imagines it wriggling and squirming.

 _"Obvious proof,"_ he had said, and so she knows she must wait until her belly swells; proof of the child within.

The waiting wears on her now, starts to drive her a little mad. She can hear centipedes in the walls; their restless and constant chittering, the skittering of thousands of feet.

One night, she wakes to find the prince standing before her cell.

"It seems we have been misled," he says, when he sees her eyes on him.

She stares, silent, his words fading in and out of the centipedes' hiss.

"On two counts," he adds, folding his hands in his sleeves. "The child may kill you," he says, as if it does not matter in the least. "Children of the centipede clan are not easy to bear, I am told."

Her tongue feels too thick to form the words, but she makes the effort. "I don't mean... to raise it."

"Ahh," he says, smiling slightly. "That is well, then. I thought you should be warned, at least. In case you had changed your mind."

He waits, but she does not reply. After a moment, he turns and leaves.

It takes her far too long to realize he never explained the second thing.

~*~*~

Whenever she closes her eyes, whenever she dares sleep, the nightmares haunt her. The child inside her grows a thousand legs, a hundred mouths, gnaws at her endlessly, chewing, chewing....

As the nights go on, the chewing becomes tearing, and she dreams of giving birth to a nest of centipedes. They ripple out of her, out through tiny holes, tearing her apart, inside and out. Endless, endless mouths and legs and chittering, clicking, ticking.

She wakes screaming, clawing at her belly, night after night, until they blur together and she is consumed, endlessly.

She holds to one thing, waking -- she must get this child, this monster, this nest of horror, out of her.

Soon.

~*~*~

It has not been that long, she tells herself. A month, perhaps? She tries to count the days, finds she cannot with any accuracy.

The centipede feet are quiet tonight; perhaps because the castle is so noisy. There are strange sounds echoing through the stone: the thud of boots, what might be screams. It makes no sense.

She counts again, and waits.

Three months, maybe? Will it take that long to show? _(Will it eat her alive before then?)_ She is so thin these days.... Surely they know. Surely --

"KANAN! Are you there?"

A voice she thought she had forgotten. _It can't be..._

"Go-nou?" she answers, softly.

"Kanan!" he calls again, and she sees him now, covered in blood.

"Gonou? Is it really you?" She cannot believe it, does not want to believe it; sees the proof in flesh and blood -- so much blood -- kneeling before her cell.

"You're alive!" he exclaims, "You're really alive!" as if this is all that matters.

She wants to laugh at him, finds herself too stunned to react at all. "Your eye," she says, not reaching out to touch the blood streaming down his right cheek. Iisou's words echo in her head, ridiculous fragments repeating promises and threats. "Why did you come here?"

 _You idiot, Gonou... He'll kill you. Kill us both. Oh, what a foolish mistake...._

 _"I'm so sorry, Kanan, for everything."_

 _ _For what?_ she wants to ask, but cannot. Her plan has unravelled, is falling at her feet. His hands on her shoulders are painful in ways she can't explain._

"Let's go home, Kanan. I promise I'll protect you."

How many has he killed, she wonders, to get here, to her? How many more _can_ he kill, to ensure they both escape? There is the prince, surely...

 _"Would you let him live?"_

 _"No. How could I?"_

And more than that, her own betrayal. Proof that she did not trust Gonou to come, could not bear to wait for him. He will hate her for this, she knows.

"It's too late, Gonou."

"Kanan?"

Poor confused boy. If only he had waited.

Iisou lied to her. She regrets only that she will not have the chance to try and kill him. To do die trying would be a better death than this.

She reaches through the bars, grasps the knife Gonou wears at his waist.

"What are you --"

She is quicker than him, would be so even if he tried to stop her. He doesn't, not until it's too late, and she has the knife in hand.

"I'm carrying his child," she says, standing beyond his reach. "The spawn of that monster grows within me."

She does not look at him. Cannot. Cannot change her mind, not now. Cannot live with his hate, her own betrayal. _(Would he want to raise the child? God forbid. God forbid... a child of their own....)_ It will kill her, soon, eat her alive. She cannot make him watch that. He could not bear it.

"That's why." There are tears on her cheeks. She feels them, and smiles. "Goodbye, Gonou."

She drives the knife deep, drags it as far sideways as she can before the pain catches up with her and she collapses. Blood spills out around her, warm and wet and sticky. The edges of her vision (blinded by tears of pain now) turn grey, then black.

"KANAN!"

She trusts Iisou will do as he said _("How could I?")_. They will both die here, and begin again.

The darkness is a blessing. A release.

**Author's Note:**

> 1 Chinese poem: [Her promises to come were empty words](http://www.chinese-poems.com/li3.html), by Li Shangyin.


End file.
